Egyptians protest delayed election results

(Vatican Radio) The speaker of Egypt’s parliament—dissolved last week by the nation’s ruling military council—has said that opponents of army rule had no weapons and only "legal and popular" means at their disposal.

Meanwhile activists have returned to Cairo’s Tahrir Square protesting the decision to delay results of Tuesday’s presidential election.

Thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters along with some secular youth revolutionary groups camped out Wednesday night in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the birthplace of last year's uprising, and denounced the ruling military coalition.

The Election Commission did not say when it would announce the winner of the runoff between the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and former prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq. Both candidates claim they won, and the commission was supposed to declare the top vote-getter Thursday.

The commission said the announcement was postponed because a panel of judges must look into about 400 complaints of voting fraud submitted by both campaigns, including lawyers for Shafiq claiming fraud in 14 of Egypt's 27 provinces, where they said ballots sent to polling centers were already marked for Morsi. Lawyers for Morsi lawyers accused Shafiq of buying votes and being involved in forging lists of registered voters to include soldiers, who are barred from voting, and names of the dead.

The delay in results for the presidential run-off adds to tensions in Egypt, where the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took a number of measures in the past week to ensure that they remained in control of the transition to democratic rule.

A court order dissolved parliament, and the military issued a constitutional declaration that makes the generals the nation's legislators and gives them control of the budget. The military will also oversee the process of writing Egypt’s new constitution. A previous attempt by Islamist groups to dominate the assembly tasked with writing the constitution was dissolved by court order.

Listen to Christopher Wells report: